OPERATIONS RESEARCH

by E. S. Wentzel

The aim of this book is to present in a widely appealing form the sub­ject matter and methods of operations research

(OR), a managerial tool designed to increase the effectiveness of mana­gerial decisions as an ob­jective supplement to the subjective assessment.

With no confinement to an exclusive area of practice, the discussion in the book is focused on the methodological as­pects which are common to all OR problems is simple and requires wherever they might ap­pear. Therefore the main emphasis is placed on such methodological treatises as problem formulation, model development, and assessment of computational results, rather than on mathematical rigor. 

In writing this text the  author — a well known Soviet mathematician and popular novelist - employed her many-year experience in govern­ mental OR projects and lectureship at the Mos­cow Institute of Trans­portation Engineering to give a vivid presentation of the relevant methods of mathematical pro­gramming, game theory, queueing models, and decision analysis. The mathematics of the book is simple and requires only expertise in probability theory. The book is devoted primarily to the practitioners who are novices to the subject. 

It will be interesting to students, engineers, managerial staff and all those involved in deci­sion making.

The book was translated from the Russian by Michael G. Edelev and was published by Mir in 1983.